Political scientist shames Jared Kushner for defending Trump against racism charges

In his third open letter to Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, Tufts Law professor Daniel Drezner took the familial White House aide to task for his seemingly-empty claim that the president is not a racist.

"I’m not writing about your all-too-public stumbles as a White House staffer," Drezner wrote in a column for The Washington Post. "No, I’m writing  because it’s time for our annual revisit of your 2016 claim that, 'Donald Trump is not anti-Semitic and he’s not a racist.'"

In the time since Kushner wrote in Observer — a publication he owned and transferred to his family's trust upon taking a job in the Trump White House — that his father-in-law is not a bigot, much has happened to refute that assertion, the Tufts political scientist wrote.

He gave four brief examples to illustrate his point: the president's infamous "sh*thole countries" comment about people from African and South American nations; his claim that deported immigrants are not "people," but are instead "animals"; his lamenting for the days when "he read Latino-sounding names on the campaign trail, listing their crimes and hearing the crowd cheer"; and the time he called the now-ousted White House economic Gary Cohn a "globalist," "a term that you cannot pretend is not drenched in anti-Semitism."

"You claimed in your 2016 letter that, 'accusations like ‘racist’ and ‘anti-Semite’ are being thrown around with a carelessness that risks rendering these words meaningless,'" Drezner wrote to the White House adviser. "Do you think the above examples are not being tossed around carelessly? They seem like pretty clear-cut examples of racism and anti-Semitism."

He reminded Kushner of his argument that "Trump’s improvisational, direct style of communication was a strength despite the occasional misstep" before noting that those same "mistakes are not so small."

"Given his increased dominance over GOP party politics, it’s telling that at least five state and national races, the GOP nominee running for office this November is, in the words of Vox’s Jane Coaston, 'either a card-carrying Nazi, a Holocaust denier, a proud white supremacist, or all of the above,'" Drezner wrote. "Some of these people are running in competitive districts, too."

"We know, from how he handled Charlottesville last year, exactly what he thinks about race in America," he added. "And his thoughts are pretty damn ugly."

Read Drezner's entire third open letter to the president's son-in-law via the Post.